Page 80 of Baron Bolt

The absurdity of that rose hard in her chest. That she should owe her whole heart’s safety to the very horror he had bolted every door to hide from her. That the thing which had made him unclean in his own reckoning was the thing that would keep him alive now. It came up like laughter. She swallowed it the way she had swallowed the breath, lest hysteria set it. It was a strange night after all.

She allowed herself, then, the one liberty the night had earned. She set her fingertips on the oldest ridge, lightly, where the silver crossed the bone.

Warm.

Rising. Falling.

Not a specimen. Not Dr. Rochat’s.

Hers, if he woke and chose to be, and she would not steal the choosing from a man who could not yet open his eyes.

She took the hand back. The print of the seam stayed in the pads of her fingers as if she had handled a hot coin.

They could not get him up the stairs.

They tried.

Luc got an arm beneath his shoulders and Ophelia called his name until Damian surfaced enough to open his eyes. The right one found her. The left lagged behind it.

“Damian.”

His mouth moved.

Nothing came.

“Can you stand?”

For a moment she thought he had not understood.

Then his head moved once against Luc’s arm.

No.

The honesty of that tiny movement frightened her more than if he had collapsed again. Damian, who would have stood on a broken leg rather than admit the inconvenience of it, could not stand.

So they waited.

The wound closed while they did.

That was the strangest part. Ten minutes. Perhaps fifteen. She lost count. Luc fetched blankets. Ophelia sat on the floor beside Damian with two fingers against his wrist and felt the pulse strengthen by increments so small she thought at first she imagined them.

Then his eyes opened again.

“Now?” Luc asked.

Damian breathed once. Deeply this time.

“Try.”

One word. Barely a voice at all.

Between them they got him up the stairs.

His weight pulled at her shoulder. Most of it still belonged to Luc. Damian could put one foot before the other now, but only just. He was warm. That fact kept arriving as if it were new. A dead thing should have been cellar-cold; he put heat through her gown and into her collarbone and she carried it with her teeth set.

He surfaced just far enough from whatever darkness held him to obey her voice.

“Damian.”